Fu­ture in the UAE

Af­ter the lib­er­a­tion of Kuwait in 1991, I went to the UAE and stayed in the Mankhoul district in Dubai. A huge build­ing was be­ing built nearby and it seemed an­other shop­ping mall was to be built af­ter the AlGhu­rair mall built in Deira in the early 1980s, mak­ing eco­nomic and so­cial break­throughs. I pointed at the un­der-con­struc­tion build­ing and de­scribed it as a ‘fu­ture mar­ket’. A friend replied that each fu­ture soon be­comes PAST.

The Bur­ju­man Mall was com­pleted, and by time it be­came fa­mous world­wide. In­flu­enced by the de­vel­op­ment of Dubai, the mall own­ers ex­panded it to be­come a huge shop­ping city sim­i­lar to other mod­ern malls in the UAE and the rest of the world. The own­ers then ren­o­vated the old sec­tion I de­scribed as the ‘fu­ture mar­ket’ years ago.

A few days ago, I vis­ited that sec­tion and started rem­i­nisc­ing about my friend’s re­marks about fu­ture be­com­ing past. I re­mem­bered that

Fu­ture takes time to be­come past. Yet, this time is not ac­cu­rately known as it varies from one place to an­other

ren­o­va­tion is the na­ture of this life, that achieve­ment is a con­stant, non­stop process and that mov­ing to­wards the fu­ture is an end­less, rest­less jour­ney!

Fu­ture takes time to be­come past. Yet, this time is not ac­cu­rately known as it varies from one place to an­other. You can stay away from cer­tain coun­tries for long years and re­turn to feel that they had been for­got­ten by time be­cause ev­ery­thing there re­mains un­changed. This does not ap­ply in the UAE, where ev­ery­body is pre­oc­cu­pied with the fu­ture even be­fore it ar­rives. Ideas and dreams soon be­come tan­gi­ble facts there be­cause the fu­ture has the abil­ity of turn­ing into the present in UAE the minute one starts talk­ing about it, as the strong will seems to have scrapped the word ‘fu­ture’ from dic­tio­nar­ies used there.